Thought this was going to be another one of those phoney "demonstrates fluency in a language the speaker had never heard/learned/spoke/been exposed to before" stories. As it is it's hardly news. I took two years of Russian but now can only remember a handful of words. Still, I'll occasionally have a dream where I am speaking it or at least perceive that I am speaking it fluently

Helena Handbasket:No, he didn't suddenly gain the ability to speak Welsh. If he can speak it now, he knew it before his injury.

In addition, his wife speaks it fluently. You don't think that kinda thing gets stored in ye olde memory banks?

The coolest part of this is the fact that a stroke unlocked portions of his memory that he didn't even know he knew. That's kinda cool. If they could only figure out what and how it happened and maybe they can find a treatment to reverse the bad effects of a stroke.

As far as I can tell from the article, the only one who thinks he was speaking Welsh was himself. I'd really like to see a corroboration from somebody else. Like, say, a native Welsh speaker.

As it is, it sounds a lot like Foreign Accent Syndrome:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_accent_syndrome

which is when stroke patients find that their speech production is impaired in a way that sounds like a foreign accent. Usually, it only sounds like that accent to non-speakers, but it's not actually that accent.

which is when stroke patients find that their speech production is impaired in a way that sounds like a foreign accent. Usually, it only sounds like that accent to non-speakers, but it's not actually that accent.

My mom spoke what sounded like German for a few hours when she was in hospice, on Fentanyl. It was pretty bizarre. If she could speak it before, it was something we never knew. Probably just the drugs talking but it freaked us out.

mbillips:red5ish: I believe Welsh Bashing is a popular sport in England. Let's sit back and watch, shall we? The English could teach us a thing or two about condescending bigotry. One is never too old to learn.

"What Terry (Jones) cannot accept is that the Welsh are a servile nation whom God put on the planet to carry out menial tasks for the English."-- John Cleese

I had to stop reading that article after the first three words of the headline: "Alun Morgan, Englishman...." "Alun" is one of the most common first names in Wales, "Morgan" is one of the four or five last names almost all Welshmen seem to have (after Jones, Thomas, Edwards, and Price). "Alun Morgan, Englishman" is like saying "Tetsuo Fuji, Korean."

There's a syndrome called Foreign Language Syndrome in which a person who suffers a stroke begins to talk in a "foreign accent". In reality, they don't really acquire a foreign accent. They just do an accent that sounds foreign and which the imagination of auditors matches with a similar foreign accent that is more or less familiar to them.

This is something slightly different. When you lose important language centres associated with speaking your native tongue, other areas of the brain where foreign lanaguages have been imprinted may be spared. The brain turns first to these and then tries to rebuild and repair the damaged brain tissue and memories.

He knew some Welsh from a two-month sejourn in that country, and his wife spoke Welsh which means he probably was exposed to Welsh frequently when she spoke to friends or family. This immersion in the Welsh language could give him a fairly thorough unconscious education in the basics of Welsh grammar (we tend to learn grammar "unconsciously" more than vocabulary, which is a more conscious and deliberate acquisition) and some Welsh vocabulary and semantics.

It would be interesting to know exactly how well he speaks Welsh. If he speaks it much better than he ever could, the brain must have switched on learning he did unconsciously as well as disinhibiting barriers to speaking with the proper accent, rhythm, etc. I know from learning French that I can in theory speak French much better than I do. There is a sort of inhibition, like stage fright, which prevents learners of a second or third language from really letting go of the habits of their first language. For example, it is probably harder for a person from a very cool, unemotional background (class, culture, language) to speak a more emotive and expressive language than vice-versa.

It fits well into many modern theories of how language is acquired (notably the work of Noam Chomsky) that a person who "unconsciously" learned a language from reasonably long exposure would have the basics of grammar, pronunciation and so forth waiting to be integrated and disinhibited by the loss of the primary language.

With his ability to speak English, he lost much of the machinery of embarassment and inhibition that prevented him from speaking better Welsh in the first place, and gained some new connections in his brain that strengthened the imprints of his linguistic knowledge, unused but not forgotten.

As for Englishmen being turned into Scotsman, it doesn't take much. A kilt and a few glasses of Scotch will do in most cases. If you could find a drug that wipes out prejudice, it could have the effect of releasing the inner Scotsman in many wavers of the flag of Saint George. Oxytocin is a possible candidate. My guess is that you would learn a foreign language more easily while drugged up like Rush Limbaugh. Perhaps this is why it is common for people to learn a foreign language when they are in love with a native speaker.

Some people seem to have a foreign language phobia (independent from chauvinism) and anything which reduces anxiety, fear and conservativism might increase language-speaking and learning abilities temporarily.

Some multi-lingual persons tell me that they forget words in their native language while speaking other languages frequently. Perhaps this fellow may have a slightly harder time remembering English words because of his Welsh, but that is not certain. Perhaps having the ability to talk with his wife and others while recovering from the stroke may make his life easier and more comfortable while he re-acquires what he has lost.

In any case, it pays to learn other languages. If nothing else, you have a backup in case of stroke, while you may also benefit from a broader and deeper understanding of semantics, grammar, etc.